The Privilege of Legacy

Some Thoughts On a Privileged Life

Of all the things I’m willing to share with the world, one of the most embarrassing is the amount of self-help books I’ve read. I’m not sure of the number, but it’s a lot. Sometimes it seems I spend more time reading about how to be a “better you” than I do trying to accentuate the parts of me the world needs.

Are you with me here?

Please tell me I’m not alone.

If you’re like me you’re reading the self-help books or blogs, perhaps binging on podcasts that will put you on the path to making your mark on the world. You want to leave a legacy.

It’s good to want to leave a legacy, particularly if the goal is to make the world a better place. But what if we’re overthinking it?

I recently had a quiet, introspective experience that had me reconsider just what legacy means. Perhaps even asking the question is a sign of privilege.

I was walking through a garden when a piece of art caught my eye. It was a large piece of steel with an over-sized hand print. Below the hand print was an inscription.

The inscription is of a good, healthy question. But as I looked at words sitting there below a hand print, the piece brought to mind the two bricks my family used as decorations growing up, particularly the one with the fingerprint on it. There’s a chance the fingerprint was left there by the enslaved person who made it. Did they intentionally mark the brick? Was that the extent of their legacy? Would they have preferred to do more than leave a fingerprint on a brick? Or was that enough?

If so, they couldn’t have possibly known how it would affect me more than a century later.

As a child – and even today, I suppose – I was free to ask the question because all of my other concerns weren’t concerns at all.

Where was I going to eat? At the dinner table when mom made dinner.

Where was I going to sleep? In my bed, in the house my parents provided for me.

I was never concerned for my safety or well-being. My parents provided.

As I continued to ruminate, my thoughts shifted to a young man in my life who is growing up in a much different situation than I did.

Adam lives in a small apartment in what many people would call the “projects.” It’s low-income housing. If he has white neighbors, I haven’t seen them.

When he contacts me by text, he begins with, “Hey dad.” It seems I’m the closest thing he has to a father in his life.

The truth is, I’m just a guy who loves him and tries to help him out from time to time. Any money I provide might buy a meal or two, but it doesn’t make a dent in his financial reality. I’ve vacillated between trying to help him grow to be a man and being concerned that I’m playing the role of “white savior,” doing little more than placating my feelings of white guilt.

Adam has a steady job at McDonalds. I’m not sure if it’s full-time or part-time, but I know he’d work more if they’d give him the hours. But I think they limit him to the maximum number of hours he can work without qualifying for health care.

He works there because it’s within walking distance of his home. He doesn’t have a car, which is fine because he doesn’t have a license. He can’t get a license because he needs to take driver’s education and he can’t afford it. Even if he could afford it, he can’t get to it. Because he doesn’t have the money for transportation. The little he does earn is used to feed him and his 6 siblings and mother, who all live in the small apartment together.

I’ve only been in that apartment once. Before then I made some assumptions about what the atmosphere might be like. Not so much the apartment itself, but the family dynamics. On the day of my visit, I was there before most of the family awoke so, I got to see them all at their “morning best.”

As they came out of their rooms, stretching and yawning, they greeted me like I was one of the family. I’d get a passive “good morning” as they yawned, as if my being there was as normal as anything. They all started playing with the baby, taking turns holding it, trying to make it laugh, and then showing everyone else when it did. Morning baby-smiles are the best, after all. The apartment was filled with a tangible sense of love and affection.

As I experienced the joy in the room I became aware of certain embarrassing presumptions I had made. I’d assumed they’d be all down in the dumps and depressed because they have a hard life. I was working on the premise that poverty breeds a depressive atmosphere. As it turns out, love doesn’t stay above the poverty level. It brightens the room there just like it does in my house.

Still, Adam’s life is vastly different from mine. These days he doesn’t leave the apartment other than for work. He gets a ride, does his job, and gets a ride home. Walking hasn’t been safe. He’s been hiding, afraid for his life.

Not long ago a man was shot and killed in Adam’s apartment complex. It was a gang-related shooting. The town Adam lives in has a lot of gang activity. The morning I was visiting, Adam’s girlfriend told me she watched one of her former classmates get shot in the head on Snapchat.

“I knew that boy!” She said to me in desperation. She told me how horrible it was to see his brains spray everywhere, and then the pool of blood grow on the ground.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d never experienced something like that before.

This is their normal, lived experience.

Adam doesn’t know the gang member who was shot and killed. However, he does know one of the suspects who’ve been arrested. They’re an old friend from high school. Adam isn’t in any gang. But the gang of the dead man is out for vengeance. In this case, vengeance might mean killing anyone who has been known to associate with one of the suspects, including Adam. So, he doesn’t leave the apartment except for work.

I thought of Adam when I read that piece of artwork.

“THE BIGGEST QUESTION I HAD AS A CHILD WAS, HOW WOULD I LEAVE MY MARK ON THE WORLD?”

Leave a mark on the world? Adam just wants to survive. He’s hoping he can just get out of his current situation. That would be the way he left his mark on the world.

My family didn’t have a lot of money growing up. We weren’t poor. I’d call us middle-class, probably. We had a food on the table and a roof over our heads.

We had a family car or two. When the tires wore down to the steel, dad would get some replacements from the junkyard. I never questioned it. I actually thought it was a good way to save money. It wouldn’t take long for those “new” tires to wear out. In a matter of months, dad would be back at the junkyard to buy more replacements. The tire alignments that might have prevented the over-wear were expensive. Besides, there are always more tires at the junkyard.

I remember enjoying the task of changing the tires. It kind of made me feel like a man.

Also, I was doing it in the driveway of a large house my dad and I (ahem) “built” together. As I knelt on the smooth pavement of our private driveway to change the tire, I was free to do so without any fear of being the victim of gang-related violence.

You can add “safety” to the list of things I had growing up.

In the comment section of my last article a reader challenged me a bit, suggesting I might do better to focus more on my own actions rather than tell an entire country how to act. It was one of those situations where we disagreed but also, she wasn’t wrong.

While I may not be certain about leaving a noteworthy legacy, I have confidence in my ability to impact Adam. Similar to a fingerprint in a brick, this influence might persist for years and contribute to the construction of something sustainable for the future.

My brick next to yours.